[douginoz]

Sorry, but I've read the FAQs/wiki/online manual and can't find what I think is a basic function.

I've pointed xbmc at my movie directory on my network share, and I've selected IMDB and told it that these are movies. Great, it then seems to start scanning but quickly ends. Library mode doesn't show my movies, only the TV I'd added previously.

I'm assuming that once I add a share, tell it what type it is, etc. it will scan the directories/files, do lookups on IMDB, and create nicely formatted screens showing the movie poster, description, rating, actor list etc. etc., and that this view will show up in Library mode. Perhaps that assumption's wrong? But if not, then xbmc must need to know how to parse my collection correctly - so where do I configure what the correct regex is supposed to be for my movie collection?

And, on the same related topic, even though it shows my tv shows using the correct banners and descriptions, it doesn't show any unwatched/watched episodes. Clearly it too didn't parse my tv show directories correctly, because obviously I haven't told it what regex to use for my particular collection.

I get the idea that XBMC wants to keep such detail away from general users, but I'm not a general user and recognise that I need to configure things a bit before xbmc is gonna work. Yet there's no mention anywhere that I can find here in the forums, online manual etc. of how you either have to set up your media directories to get parsed correctly by xbmc, or what filename formats it supports.

FYI, fwiw, my formats are:

\\share\TV\LOST\Season 01\01 - Pilot.avi
\\share\TV\LOST\Season 01\02 - Blah blah.avi
\\share\TV\LOST\Season 02\01 - etc.avi
\\share\TV\Mad About You\Season 01\01 - Romantic Improv.avi

\\share\Movies\7 Seconds\7 Seconds.avi
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD1.avi
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD2.avi

I'd appreciate any links to any pages that spell this stuff out one way or another, or am I asking a question that hasn't been answered before?

[rwparris2]

Try using folder names as title when you scan your movies (its in the scraper settings)

You'll be interested in this:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Advancedsettings.xml

[douginoz]

Yeah, I had that enabled already. But thanks for the pointer to the xml file - looks like <tvshowmatching> is the area I need to customise for my shows.

The <moviestacking> looks like it might be appropriate for movies, but I think that this is for when you have all your movie files in one directory or something. The concept of "stacking" isn't described anywhere so it's hard to interpret what it means. Besides, if it's getting movie info from the directory name, it shouldn't need a regex for the actual movie video file.

Now to work out what a regex is for my tv shows...

[rwparris2]

Stacking refers to videos that span multiple files.
Your example:
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD1.avi
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD2.avi
would use stacking to make just show up as "8 Mile"

Not sure what's going on with your movies, it looks like it should work.

and I'm not so sure you CAN save your current file structure for TV shows using regex. I'm not saying you can't, but it is my understanding that xbmc totally ignores season folders and just looks at the TV Show name and then gets both season and episode from the file name (e.g. s01e05.avi)

I'm not an expert on naming conventions though so anyone who knows better please tell me to stfu and set things straight

[douginoz]

Stacking refers to videos that span multiple files.
Your example:
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD1.avi
\\share\Movies\8 Mile\8 Mile CD2.avi
would use stacking to make just show up as "8 Mile"

Not sure what's going on with your movies, it looks like it should work.

and I'm not so sure you CAN save your current file structure for TV shows using regex. I'm not saying you can't, but it is my understanding that xbmc totally ignores season folders and just looks at the TV Show name and then gets both season and episode from the file name (e.g. s01e05.avi)

I'm not an expert on naming conventions though so anyone who knows better please tell me to stfu and set things straight

Uh, you're kidding, right? TV episodes have to have the filenaming convention of "s01e05"? Why? Because that's one of the near-infinite varieties of naming that pirates use on p2p sites?

Ok, I'll bite - but where's this mentioned anywhere? Where's ANYTHING mentioned anywhere about what format the files need to be in? Is the application expecting that everyone that uses xbmc will somehow be part of some mass hypnosis and follow some unwritten naming convention?

Oh sheesh.

Ok, fine, I'll give xbmc a miss. But the authors might want to consider posting something obvious, like REALLY OBVIOUS, about how your media files need to be named.

[dhrandy]

I am also needing help with this with tv shows. My naming convention is as follows for tv shows.

\\share\TV\LOST\Season 01\Lost - 01 - Pilot.avi

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[rwparris2]

Ok, I'll bite - but where's this mentioned anywhere? Where's ANYTHING mentioned anywhere about what format the files need to be in? Is the application expecting that everyone that uses xbmc will somehow be part of some mass hypnosis and follow some unwritten naming convention?

Oh sheesh.

Ok, fine, I'll give xbmc a miss. But the authors might want to consider posting something obvious, like REALLY OBVIOUS, about how your media files need to be named.

Seriously guy? You couldn't find it? Here's how to use the internet:

1) go to google.com
2) type the name of the application you're having problems with, and the specific function that's giving you trouble. in this case, we'll do 'xbmc tv shows'
3)click the first link that comes up.

Ok, so maybe you're not big on search engines, and you'd rather the info be directly available on the application's site, and furthermore, you'd like the manual to be linked from the front page, in some sort of easy to use wiki. Well holy shit, there's an online manual right there under 'support' (who woulda' thunk?)

From your response it looks like you read the link I sent you, then read my response, and then totally and completely forgot what you had just read. How do you do that??
And for future reference, e.g. means 'For Example,' not 'this is the one and only way to do it'.

[GileraGFR]

Sorry to try and steal this thread but my question is related.

Any film that i have stored on my server that's split in two parts are split at the folder level i.e \\films\some_film\cd1\film.avi

Is there anyway to get xbmc to treat the folders as stacked folders? and/or the library to see the some_film folder as the one to thumbnail instead of the CD1 folder?

Thanks